Hammering In My Head
by Miss R
Summary: They failed to cause their Armageddon, and now Schuldich and Crawford have to try and disappear completely...or face the consequences of exposing themselves to the agents of Estet.


**Note:** Takes place a few months after the first season. Begun before any knowledge of Schwarz's fate in _Gluhen_ was known. I took the liberty of killing off Nagi and Farfello in this piece, as you can see. Could continue, or I could leave it as a one shot. Depends on my own motivation level. 

**Hammering in My Head**

  
  
_I never claimed to be your saviour.  
I said I had a dirty mouth   
Stop analysing my behaviour   
If you're too dumb to work it out.  
  
I've got to keep myself together. You know I hate to disappoint   
A masochistic lamb to slaughter   
Maybe you miss the point.  
  
I'm feeling small   
I'm climbing the walls I don't let it show._  
  
-- Garbage "Dumb" 

**1**

  
Tokyo is a neon drenched smear on either side of the highway, framing the Buick like a surreal painting. Or at least it looks that way from inside the car, the illusion only parting momentarily every time the wind shied wipers scrape across the glass. 

Rain falls in slow motion in the Real World, crashing to the concrete surface of the highway with audible bangs, as though it were glass droplets that were bleeding out the clouds instead of simple H2O. 

There's no difference between that noise and that of a gun releasing a bullet into the atmosphere. But maybe I'm just tired. 

That's a possibility as well. 

I fucking hate driving, even if I'm not the one working a car. Being a passenger is even more terrible than trying to control two tons of steel and plastic. I hate doing this at night even more, because night's when I should be out trashing my hips around, exchanging messily placed kisses in some greasy bathroom with a high school girl who'll actually believe it if I tell her she's beautiful. The slight accent that hitches my voice turns those school children on. I am Foreign, I am Different. I am Dangerous. I make morbid jokes, twist their necks a little too far too one side to make the scene comfortable. 

I always tell the girls what I am; it's their choice not to believe it. 

Brad's hands are closed tightly around the steering wheel, knuckles an ivory I could easily confuse for the color of a dead man's hands. Maybe he really is dead, a puppet dragged around with hollow chocolate eyes I rarely catch a glimpse of. If it's one American habit he's never dropped, its never making eye contact with any of his speakers. He always looks just beyond you, stares off into infinity. 

He does that to me, and I've known him just short of forever. No-that's a lie. I have known Brad forever, or at least that was what my mind tells me. I've known him since I was fourteen, and that to me is several lifetimes ago. I let my eyes drift in his direction, almost cautious not to betray my interest. "What time is it?" I tilt my head towards what I hope is his watch. In the dark interior of the vehicle, the face of the miniature clock is clouded. 

"Two-thirty seven." 

"How much longer?" I must sound seven, impatient and squirming in the leather seat I've been bound into for the past five hours. 

Mechanically, Brad raises a finger to push at his glasses, which are slipping down the sweat slickened bridge of his nose. He only manages to lift his hand off the steering wheel a few inches before I crane my form over to complete the movement. "Just drive," I say, not sure whether my words are command or suggestion. 

"Mind if I turn the radio on?" I make a motion towards the stereo system that rests just below the dashboard. "It's too quiet," I say pointedly. 

Exchanging in bull shit conversation with Brad is out of the question at this point. His only rational thoughts are coming in exhaustion laced syllables, one or two words if I'm lucky. The bags under his eyes look like crush velvet, a deep shade of violent that is indistinguishable from black. He nods his head, not breaking eye contact with the road that slips away under the tires. I fold my torso so that I can reach the knobs, and with a flick of my wrist, music is dripping from the speakers, and the two of us are bathed in the opalescent light of the stereo's track numbers. I adjust the volume, making sure it's not loud enough to blow our ear drums out. Brad will only be patient with me; loud music will not go over well, nor will it ever. 

I settle back into my former position, folding my arms behind me, hands resting on the base of my skull. 

"And you don't seem the lying kind. A shame that I can't read your mind..." the radio sings melodically. I smile, but it isn't one of satisfaction. I think someone wrote this song just so I could hear it at two thirty seven in the morning. 

_God hates me_, I internally grumble. I rise slightly from my seat and shut the radio off once more, scowling at the piece of machinery. It does nothing in response, of course, but I almost expect it to spit another song my way. 

Another song that reminds me what I am. 

"I thought you wanted to listen to the radio," Brad quips from his seat. I made a face his way, half hoping he doesn't see my display of immaturity. 

"I didn't want to listen to whatever that song was," I say. 

"Why? I thought you liked that sort of music." 

"I think," I hook a strand of sanguine hair behind one ear, "someone wrote that song just to make fun of me. 'And you don't seem the lying kind. A shame that I can read your mind.' See?" 

"It's just a song," Brad says in a tired voice. 

"Doesn't music ever get to you?" I ask. "Haven't you ever heard a song and hated it just because you thought it was talking directly _to_ you?" I must be sleep deprived; here I am babbling about my obsession with lyrics and melodies. 

_My headphones, they saved my life_, I repeat internally. 

"No," he says simply. "That's never happened to me." 

"Never?" 

"Never." 

"Well then, I guess I'm just a freak. I can only remember things if I have a song to remember them _by_." My hand wanders down to the button at near my seatbelt, and I shove down on it hard with two fingers as I recline backwards. I grin, a bit madly I'm afraid. "I didn't know I could push this back this far," I say. 

Brad flicks his interest towards me momentarily, surprisingly enough. Yeah. He finally pays attention to me when I'm almost laying flat on the seat of his Buick, rips stretching apart like a cat's and I reach towards the cloud infected sky with both arms. "Neither did I," says Brad, quirking an eyebrow. 

"I love this car," I say with a contented sigh. "I love you for getting this car." I can practically feel the way the air moves as Brad rolls his eyes behind closed lids and thin lens. 

"Glad you like it," he says dryly. Brad tilts his head towards the driver's side window, and squints out into the smudge of a city blurred by the continuous bombardment of rain. "We should be getting near the hotel." 

"Thank God." I put an emphasis on every letter, and he gives me a dirty look for it. "I am so fucking _sick_ of driving." 

"You're not driving," Brad points out. 

"Okay. I'm so fucking sick of being in this car, then, despite how much I love this seat." I pat the edge of the arm rest to accentuate my gratefulness. "So, what's the plan?" I try to sound inquisitive about the subject, but chances are I fail. 

"The plan?" he asks. 

"What we're going to do once we get into Tokyo," I say impatiently. "We've hopped from Osaka to Guangzhou to Beijing since Nagi and Farfello..." A pause, and I let the momentary silence speak for itself, "...and now we're back _here_ and I want to know what the fuck we're going to do." 

Brad turns on me, brow creased. "What do _you_ want do, Schuldich?" he asks me sternly, a teacher about to jump into a lecture concerning a student's ill behavior. 

I allow the first answer that surfaces from my brain to slip through my lips. "I don't want to die." 

"Neither do I." 

"I don't want to get caught by Estet." That's a fucking given. Torture and death would not exactly be what I wish to be the fate that I am lead to. 

"Neither do I." 

"I don't want to go back to Rozenkreuz." As a matter of fact, that's the _last_ thing I want to do. Let Estet rip out all my vital organs and throw my body in a ditch somewhere in Siberia, but God preserve us from Rozenkreuz. Brad must sense my unease, for I see a flash of softness flash through his irises. 

"Neither do I." He transfers his weight in the seat. 

_Neither do I._ The thought echoes in this mind, and we are silent. 

**2**

  
We have such bullshit paperwork its not even funny. 

Seriously. 

Brad hands up his so-called identification to the receptionist, who examines it closely. I watch her eyes skim across the fine print, checking for any errors the United States might have made on Brad's passport. Except it's _not_ Brad's passport. It's Robert Smith's passport. Robert Smith, who simply _happens_ to look astonishingly like a certain Bradley Crawford without glasses, works for an up and coming computer company in Chicago, and has spent the past two weeks in Japan trying to persuade the Mitsubishi company to buy some of their software. 

I know this because Brad told me to know this. 

I must know the elaborate scope of his false hoods or else we will no hope of reaching out next birthdays. 

Birthdays? 

Bradley will be twenty-nine in two months. I'm starting to wonder if we'll be in Estet's greedy little claws by then, or possibly even dead. Cause yeah, fucking up someone's End of the World has ugly consequences. In a nervously gesture I immediately regret, I shove my hands deep into the pockets of my navy duster. I feel too exposed in a room that does not simply contain Brad and myself. 

The receptionist hands Bradley back the fake paper work in exchange for his credit card (also bullshit) and we wait. The eyes of the world are upon his, and I feel the hairs on the back of my neck prickle, slightly. _Is this a safe place?_ I slip into his mind and ask. 

_Schuldich, we're never safe_, he replies. Even though he's never going to pay the bill for the room, he seems somewhat annoyed with the price of our temporary place of residence. Five hundred U.S. dollars a night, and we might be here for a long while. Or we may pull another midnight escape. Only the Fates know at this point. 

_Okay, relatively speaking, then. Are we going to *die* if we stay here tonight?_ I correct myself. 

_No,_ he replies, and cuts me off. I sigh heavily and run a hand quickly through my hair. It's tangled, and I only ran a brush through it hours ago. Chopping it off is beginning to seem the only option, but the idea makes me slightly uneasy. I would look thirteen again. I was fifteen when I met Brad. Going back to _before_ memory's beginning does not seem to be a place I even want to venture by physically mimicking the way I look according to water smudged photographs. 

The receptionist gives Brad back his hard, along with two keycards. It's my cue, and pad across the floor to meet him. "I hate those things," I complain. "They never fucking work." Brad ignores me. He hands extends one of the so-called keys with one hand while the other shoves his wallet back into the pocket of his jacket. 

"Don't loose that," he says sternly. I grab the key card from his hand, feeling my lip curl into a slight snarl. 

He's back to being stoic, and I want to wring his fucking neck for it. Brad reaches over and grabs his bag from out of my hand and I follow him in the direction of the elevators, feet stomping on the marble tiled floor loudly to express my displeasure. He ignores the irritated gesture and steps into an elevator. I have to jog in order to catch up to him, and I find with some disgust that only Brad's heel keeps the doors from clipping my nose as I approach. "Couldn't you just be a normal human being and hold the damn thing open?" 

"No," he says flatly. I grumble and pass him, our shoulders brushing together for the briefest moment before I retreat to the back of the elevator. The doors draw together before me, and the machine begins to move upwards. 

"How many stories is this place?" Brad does not reply immediately, studying the lit up numbers at his left for a moment. 

"Probably 30 or so." 

"Small or large?" I ask. Growing up in Europe has its disadvantages; sky scrappers are practically as unheard of as getting some fucking ice in your drink. Everything is flat and gray, square rectangles and twisting spires of churches that seem to desperately claw to meet the heavens dot the landscape, so terribly unlike the metallic buildings constructed of titanium and glass that exist in Japan. 

"Small, I suppose," Brad says off handily. 

Brad thrusts the keycard forward, running it through the small device attached to our door handle. The red light on the mechanism goes on, and with an agitated sigh, he tries once more. I shift my weight from one foot the other, attempting to relieve the coiled knot of muscle that is rock hard against the blade of my shoulder. 

Last year when I actually had time to fucking kill, I read this kid's book about a girl who grew wings. Her back just started hurting one day and then poff! Full blow wings the color of milk and honey. I guess I left the book somewhere-a job, the purple wallpapered house we had to run from without so much as getting a clean shirt after we failed to cause Armageddon, Mr. Takatori's fucking limo, maybe. 

I sort of wish I had it now. I could convince myself I was about to sprout angel wings. I could convince myself my body wasn't starting to kill itself, and that I just going to become someone else. My brain isn't frying itself. My back isn't being raped by crappy beds and sleeping in train stations and the fucking drugs. Prescription, yes, but morphine honestly starts having the same affect as LSD after you've been taking it for more than year straight, twice a day, seven days a week. The world stops seeming _right_, like a photograph submerged in ocean water. The color, the sensations...they all blur together in a tapestry of grating colors and rain. 

Brad finally succeeds in getting the fucking keycard to work. With a grunt, he twists the brass knob, and the door swings inward, dissolving momentarily into the inky darkness. I squint. 

The room's fucking small. Two beds, a bathroom, and a little TV that sits like a golden calf onto of the desk parallel to the mattresses. I've had fucking closets that were bigger than this place. Then again, everything in Japan is fucking miniature. We step inside. "Home sweet fucking home," I say and swing my bag up in the air. I release it, and heard a resounding thud as the suitcase hits the bed. I close the door with my foot. 

"You're lucky we're not sleeping in the car," Brad says, placing his own bag on the floor. He bends down, and fumbles in his pocket for the key to the case. After a moment, he produces it. 

"Big fucking difference that would have made." I hurl myself onto the mattress, and it lurches uneasily underneath me. "This room is about as _big_ as the fucking car." I'm swearing every five words and my posture is rigid, cat-like as I stretch my arms above my head in the direction of the light above us. He recognizes all these symptoms of exhaustion all too well, and unzips his suitcase. 

"When's the next time you'll need medication?" he asks. He's looking for something to sleep in, maybe. Or his toothbrush or something. I roll onto my side, ribcage pressing against the cool comforter. Liquid ice burns my skin through the shirt I've got half undone. I'm tired of even trying to look dignified. Brad, tie and collared shirt and all, has not. The world will end a hundred times before Bradley fucking Crawford stops attempting to imitate the business men from the land of his birth. 

"Dunno. Soon," I reply. My lids drop over my pupils like twin shutters, and the world is plunged into meaningless blots of navy and crimson that splatter like blood and paint across my vision. "I'll check the bottle in the morning. And by the way, why the fuck are we sharing a bed?" 

"All the doubles were taken," Brad says sullenly. I can heard him undoing his tie. Simple black silk, if I remember. "And no, it wouldn't have been any bigger if there had been any rooms with two beds, before you ask." 

"Been here before?" I ask. Probably. Bradley Crawford and hotels just _fit_. 

"There are very few differences between hotels." 

"Well, now that you've informed me that hotels are the product of failed cloning experiments..." I chuckle at my own mad humor, the sound muffled slightly by the pillow pressed against one side of my mouth. I hear him approach me, socks swishing softly across the carpet. 

"Are you going to take a shower?" he asks. I don't bother to move myself in order to face him. My bones are aching, filled with a poison that has slowly begun to invade their marrow. The girl in the room is the process of hot and heavy make-out sessions with her boyfriend. The kid down the hall just had a nightmare (monsters, apparently. How is it that those things always seem to abandon their position under your bed by the time by the time you're about eleven? Do they just get bored or do _you_?). The wife and husband two doors down are concocting schemes to throw one another out the partially open window. My bet's on the wife. 

"Schuldich?" Brad's voice cuts like a warm knife through the voices flashing like lightened across the scape of my brain. "Schuldich?" 

"No, you go ahead," I say. It takes a significant amount of energy to force the words from my vocal cords, and even then I'm not sure what language I uttered them in. German, Japanese, English, French...god. I know too much. I'm _too_ fucking educated, and I don't know shit. "You better hope they give you free shampoo in this hotel, cause we used the last of it yesterday." If I had enough energy, I'd wave my hand in a dismissal motion. "Go, go." 

I can feel his eyes narrow behind the frame of his spectacles. "Get some sleep, Schuldich," he says. Great, Brad. Tell the fucking insomniac to _sleep_. I chuckle sardonically into the pillow. 

"Yeah. Right." 

**OWARI**


End file.
